


Cancel

by hellkitty



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 06:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2418656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warnings: rape, character death, forced pregnancy, dark.<br/>Prompt: Prompt: 186. Pacific Rim -- any characters -- Kaiju Blue (<br/>http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Kaiju_Blue) doesn't just poison humans; it mutates them into something powerful, hungry and not remotely alive. (2014)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cancel

Raleigh first noticed the change after Alaska. After...that.  After then.  After losing Yancy, his brother’s existence snatched, torn out of his life, his mind. He felt Yancy die, the fear and pain and the last thought, only half-formed, of Raleigh. 

It was grief, he’d told himself at first, when he’d come to shore, vomiting a sort of pea-green froth. It was grief and loss and horror that the human mind, the human spirit, wasn’t built to withstand.  

That’s what he told himself. Humans weren’t designed for the Drift.  He still didn’t know how he’d made it to the coast, Gipsy sloshing with kaiju blood and icy water, tasting of salt and some fetid rotting thing.  Sheer instinct, pure survival, nothing else.  

And he’d lived on those two alone, for years, plagued by dreams that seemed less like nightmares than vast voids stretching within his brain, the sense of being pulled apart, wracked, every time he closed his eyes. He woke up, day after day, in the grey light of predawn, stomach cramped and burning, as though he’d drunk acid. 

It had made him mean, on the Wall: sick and tired and disbelieving. He was hard to get to know and he kept it that way, and something in the way he could narrow his eyes would send anyone shying to another direction.  And when someone died, Raleigh would feel a stir in his belly, a grim almost satisfaction, as though a voice was saying in a language he didn’t understand ‘one less, one less.’ 

He would do his work, occupy his hands, and the top part of his mind, with the requirements of it: bolts and welds and rebar.  But he’d catch himself, from time to time, staring out to the grey unrest of the Pacific, roiling like some enormous serpent, and those dark thoughts, like shapes without names, would wash over him again. 

***

He’d thought fighting again would help, something to do to exorcise his own demons. And it had--both the outlet for the violence that seemed to have swelled in him since losing Yancy and the Drift, the control that had become second nature years before, keeping the darkness just to his dreams. 

Mako didn’t know. He made sure of it, probing into her mind in the Drift. She had no idea of the violence in his heart, of the slimy darkness in his belly.  She thought he was like she was--bright and honorable, violence a well-honed weapon unsheathed. He wasn’t. He was a force of nature, released, chaos and damage and a maelstrom of hunger and rage. 

And then came the Throat, his trip into the Kaiju world, where shapes had shifted, unstable, like seeing underwater, and he’d felt that darkness in his heart call out and get some response. 

And ever since then, any control he’d thought he’d had over it was gone, from the moment he blinked in the bright daylight of the Pacific waters, Mako’s drivesuited arms tight around his shoulders.  He found it hard to think: the other dimension, the other world, it had awakened something in him, and when he returned, he felt...changed again, not just cruel but hungry, the pain of a dying race tearing through him, seeking escape the only way it could, through violence. 

***

Mako woke up, the sudden jerking awake she’d done since...then.  It had been so much to endure in one day: losing Stacker, winning the war, gaining--she’d thought--Raleigh.  It had been a tectonic shift, plates of her life rearranging each other all at once.  It took time to process all of it, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens, so she endured the moments like this--waking, gasping, staring at the shadows clustered around the riveted ceiling seams--with equanimity. It would pass, eventually.  She just had to be patient. 

She felt rudderless, at times; a reminder of how much of a void Stacker had left, how much she had let him shape her life.  And she missed it, even as she cherished her new freedom, her new confidence--there was something she missed about Stacker’s guardianship: feeling safe, protected, special, precious.  Ten years ago, five, if she’d woken from a nightmare, she’d have known Stacker was in the next room, sleeping lightly, easily awakened if she needed to curl up beside him, and just that knowledge had been enough--his stolid, steady presence there for her had been all she needed to know. 

And that was gone, and he was gone and, yes, it would take time to reorder her world.  It was all right, she told herself, swinging her legs over the edge of the narrow mattress, to take time, to rebuild. Everyone was rebuilding now, and this was no different.  Patience, Mako. It has always been your virtue. 

Food seemed like a good idea, as she was feeling her way into this new present.  Nothing could replace Stacker, but she needed something to do, some new ritual to replace him.  And cocoa seemed like a good start: warm and sweet. Maybe she could even find some marshmallows in the galley.  

Mako walked down the corridor, lit only by the night strips, little glowing bands of light, just enough to show the corners and lines, belting her robe around her waist. She didn’t need them: she’d been at the Hong Kong shatterdome for long enough to maneuver in the dark.  

She could move somewhere else, but...where?  Shatterdomes had been her life ever since Tokyo, ever since she’d been a little girl with a lost shoe.  It was a change she’d make...eventually. But now, the heavy mass of the armored dome, the militarized efficiency at every corner seemed like home, comforting in its familiarity. It knew what it was, and it was a kind of confidence she’d found herself sorely needing lately. 

There was a light on, ahead, a faint glow from the galley, more than the emergency light strips that were almost always active.  You were never fully in the dark in a Shatterdome, even if the power went out. Another comforting efficiency. 

Still, it meant someone else was up: she tightened the belt of her robe around her slim waist as she rounded the corner, preparing her shy, public smile. 

...which faded as she stepped into the broad, thin pool of light. She could hear something now, a sound that set her teeth on edge, something unpleasant and vile slithering in the back of her head: a wet sort of crunching sound, a crude slurping.  A rat. Maybe it was a rat, but if it was, it was a big one.  And weren’t they supposed to scurry in fear?

Mako looked around, seeing at first just the row after row of tables, chairs a forest of legs sticking up in the air, casting a maze of shadows in the weak light.  

But there, one table in the row knocked askew, a chair tumbled off the top.  

Maybe it was a rat, but she had moved too quietly to startle it. “Hello?”  Stop this, Mako. Don’t stand in the doorway like a little girl.  She moved in, one hand reaching for one of the upended chair legs, making her way slowly along the ranks of tables. “Hello?”  

She expected to hear a scramble of feet after the sound stopped, but instead there was silence, a predatory wariness. 

She’d started this: now she had to finish, though all thought of cocoa had evaporated. If there was a threat here, with Stacker gone...she had to step up, take charge.  She couldn’t run and hide behind him.  

Her feet moved on the cold tiles, each step feeling colder and colder, as though the ceramic was eating into her bones. Mako squinted, trying to peer between the chair legs, up, then bending low. 

Blood. She saw blood, a dark pool of it, a smear off to the left as though something had flailed through it. She sucked in a breath, dropping to one knee. 

And then the other hit the ground beside it, hard, a collapse against the cold floor. “R-raleigh?”

It shouldn’t have been a question. It was Raleigh, the powerful muscle of a bared thigh dappled with the same blood that darkened the plaid of the boxer shorts, the chest, his mouth. 

And Max. Or what was left of Max, the dog’s brown eyes staring at her, puzzled and almost sad.  

“Raleigh!” Stacker would know what to do, what to say. She was just repeating herself, again, her brown eyes desperately searching his face, trying to find something familiar, something of the man she’d embraced after...after that day.  

The whites of his eyes were blue, almost glowing, and inhuman, over a mouth clotted with dog’s blood.  

He grunted, growled, some inhuman sound she couldn’t even imagine a word for, and then lunged over the table at her, Max’s corpse hitting the floor with a wet splat, chairs clanging like a storm of sound around her, and a hand, cold and hard and leathery, closed over her wrist. 

He hauled her close, the table banging against her hip, bruisingly hard, gobbets of blood and muscle in his hands, his mouth, a string of tendon in his teeth. He looked. alien, feral, different, wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly how: he just wasn't...human any more.  

***

He has become a creature of raw appetite by now, only whetted by the tin tang of the dog’s carcass: he sees her, takes her, hands tearing off her clothes, bloody mouth hot on hers and she's gagging at the dog blood in his mouth, the way the kiss tears at her lips, bruising them, the whipcord hardness of his body almost harder, as if armored, immune to the jabs she directs at his kidneys, the sore spot all humans had under their arms.  

Nothing worked, nothing could stop what he has become now, what he is becoming. He tears the robe, the terrycloth shrieking as it gave, and her body, twisting with protest, was a lure he couldn’t resist, plush and supple and alluring under, through, the shreds of fabric, as he drags her across the table, the bare skin of her ass protesting over the metal. 

He drives into her, even though she squeezes her thighs together against him, knees and heels trying to force him away: he just pushes her tight knees to one side, taking her, belly over her hip and she wasn't ready she didn't want this--it was dry and agonizing, tearing into her and it was almost a relief when he came, fluid coating them, spilling in her sore, chafed walls.  

He no longer knew his name: the sounds she yells echoing in the room like some formless howl, meaningless.  He is just...hunger, wanting, needing. Taking. Conquest.  Feeding and fighting were twin poles in his existence, his new spine, the barb that tore her vulva has he withdrew, his member like a shark’s or a cat’s, tearing and marking, scarring, and he had to bury the feral laugh, the last half-human sound he could make, a sound of bestial joy, as he pushed her away, broken. 

****

 

And she hated him, then, hated whatever he had become, who had torn the fragile dream of what could be from her. She'd dared to dream of peace, dared to think that Pentecost's loss was balanced by the gain of Raleigh, by this new thing, as equals, growing between them. She'd felt herself growing, a flower out from under the shade of an enormous tree, spreading her leaves and roots. She’d felt hope, she’d felt a future, some new thing without war, without fighting and fear.  Mako had dared to imagine a world where the little girl she’d been could become just a distant memory to the woman she’d become, and no child would ever run through the ruins of their shattered world. 

And now this, and she felt trampled, half torn up, and Pentecost's death was just another blasphemy, another unbearable loss in the world teetering at the end. Once again, a pretty, safe world, a world of potential and future broke into pieces around her, like falling buildings.  

She rolled onto one side, a ball of misery, the pain in her belly nothing compared to the pounding ache of her heart. It felt like the whole world was shaking apart, and for a moment, she wished it would, wished the world would end without her.

But that was the thought of a little girl, clinging to the memory of her father, clinging to the symbols of normalcy in a red shoe. She couldn't be that anymore.

Or she could. She could lie here, and let Raleigh--the thing that had been Raleigh--go, and kill more than dogs, and spread the contamination. She could be responsible for the start of a second apocalypse.

Or she could move, and kill him--or die trying--and at least die as a woman, as a human.

He moved, foot slipping in the congealing blood, turning away from her. As though she was worthless, now, as though she wasn’t even worth killing.  He was done with her, the scalding heat of shame still burning in her belly, slick on her thighs. 

She moved, as fast as she could, grabbing one of the cafeteria chairs, bringing it down with all her force across the back of his shoulders. 

It almost bounced back, from his hardened skin, and he turned, hand a feral claw, dashing the chair from her hand.  It splintered, plastic cracking into pieces, clattering on the floor. He--she couldn’t call him, couldn’t think of him as Raleigh--hauled her closer by the tatters of her robe, and for a moment she was inches away from him, smelling the salt water decay of his breath. He sniffed at her, sucking down the air around her face--she could feel it move over her cheeks, her eyes--before he shoved her away with a grunt.  

Mako hit the floor, hands flung out to catch her weight.  Her right hand landed on a shard of plastic from the broken chair, gouging into her palm, her shoulder bouncing--with an abjecting shudder--off of Max’s cooling skull.

He was walking, away, his eyes alien and blue.  Away, still alight with hunger and violence. 

No. No. She couldn’t let him.  

He had to have a vulnerability. Even the kaiju had them. They could be killed. He could be killed. She just had to be smart enough, strong enough.  

Mako launched herself from a crouch at him, shoulders at his knees, taking him down with her, a biomechanical reflex.  He landed, heavy, but twisting, spine moving in ways that were beyond human. Mako could swear she heard bones popping, snapping, as he turned around, mouth slavering blood and saliva.  The mouth? 

No, the eyes, those hateful blue-rimmed eyes, the first signs she’d had that Raleigh was different, changed.  She tightened her grip on the plastic shard, feeling it dig into her skin. 

Her weight felt like nothing on him, his skin felt leathery and hard, like armor, and even the eyelids he turned toward her looked hooded, reptilian, armoring up.  

She had one chance, only one, but she found herself hesitating, because it was Raleigh’s face, after all, though changed, Raleigh, who had saved her, saved the world.  

“Raleigh,” she said, her voice a raw sob, torn from deep in her belly. She wanted to see him one last time, one flash of recognition, one last, tiny glimpse of the man she’d thought she could love.  

Nothing, just the blue of the rims of his eyes, swirling like whirlpools into a world she didn’t want to know. He was gone, Raleigh was dead. This wasn’t even a mercy killing.

He was a kaiju, he was like them, and there was--there should be--no remorse. 

The ersatz blade landed, jolting off the side of his eye socket, plunging through the eye, bursting hot and liquid against her hand as she raised the plastic shard, drove it down again and again, into the bone at the back of the socket. He gave a howl, a cry of pain, lost in her own sobs as she pounded, again and again, with the plastic into his face, blood and blue liquid marring his face.  His body bucked under her, hands drawing lines of blood up her bare thighs, but she held on, knees clinging against his shoulders, grim and agonized. 

Finally, silence, stillness, his body falling limp under her. Mako’s breath was a harsh rasp, her arms felt leaden, heavy and exhausted and sore. She could feel where his blood had splattered against her like little burns of acid, but she didn’t have the strength to wipe it away. 

It was over. He was gone, he was dead and the threat of whatever he had become was over. 

Mako rolled to her side, curling in a ball around the stained shard, back to the wreck that had been Raleigh Becket, too agonized to even cry. 

 

She felt something dark, blue black and evil, swimming in her blood, shifting in her womb. And she knew.  She knew why he hadn’t killed her, why he’d fought, but not that hard, when she’d attacked.  

For everyone else, the worst was over, but for her, seeing him, and the feral blankness in his eyes, feeling the new life swimming in her belly, she knew the worst was just beginning. 

 


End file.
